


Will We Pinch At Our Skin And Wonder How We Escaped Harm?

by ouiser_boudreaux



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Gen, The Problem of Susan, everyone just needs tea and a hug and a book, just a lot of thoughts on divine grace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22059892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouiser_boudreaux/pseuds/ouiser_boudreaux
Summary: After the war - the wars, there were many wars and many lifetimes after all - Susan takes to taking walks. An unusual friendship or two comes along, along with questions of grace and divinity and forgiveness.
Relationships: Susan Pevensie & Aziraphale, Susan Pevensie & Crowley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	Will We Pinch At Our Skin And Wonder How We Escaped Harm?

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Two Gentle Souls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163730) by [Haberdasher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher). 



After they came back through the wardrobe, after the Blitz, after the war in the real world and the war without (though why Narnia didn't feel like a real world in her mind anymore, she couldn't say), Susan went on long afternoon walks. She had a tendency to put down her teacup, brush imagined crumbs from her lap, and stride toward the door without a single glance backward to tell anyone she was gone. Asking permission still didn't come naturally, and even here in the stuffy confines of their shabby London home she often forgot when she was, where she was, who she was supposed to be.

Their mother hated her walks. Peter, most irritatingly, also objected, and Edmund and Lucy confoundingly agreed. Only their father didn't seem to mind; there was a tacit understanding, a look in his eye when he saw her mood turn outward, and he answered her declarations with some of his own. "I'm going for a walk," Susan would say. "You'll be home before dark," Father would reply. 

Susan heard her parents' hushed tones one afternoon, when she couldn't even wait for tea before walking out the door. "It's dangerous," Mother whispered fiercely. "She's too young to be out on her own."

"They've all grown," Father murmured. "They saw the worst danger already."

He meant the raids, of course, and Susan supposed that was as true as anything. Narnia had its dangers, but its nights were never ripped apart by the wail of sirens. Two wars. Two worlds. Two lifetimes. She wondered if any of them managed to properly hide it. She wondered if everyone could see the second shadow of a shadow behind the Pevensie children's eyes, or if no one saw it, and which of the two she preferred. She wondered if perhaps it had all been just another nightmare carried on the smoke of a bomb.

She wondered and wandered on a blustery autumn afternoon through Soho. Technically, she wasn't allowed to come here. "No bad neighborhoods," Mother said in a resigned tone when she saw Susan putting on her coat. That might as well have been every neighborhood outside of their block, for all their mother was concerned.  _ There are no more neighborhoods, really _ , Susan wanted to retort. The London they'd known as children ( _ we're still children _ , she reminded herself) was gone forever, and in its place were buildings blown apart, doorways that led to nowhere (no matter how much she wished they might lead somewhere), rubble that would need a lifetime just to be removed but never quite removed from memory. All except for one remarkably unremarkable doorway, that is.

**AZ Fell & Co.**

_ How strange _ , Susan thought, that a bookshop would be one of the few remaining untouched structures in the West End. Even churches hadn't escaped the ravages of war, for all the good their divine provenance might do them. It was miraculous, really.  _ Maybe it's the only real sacred place here. _

She had been by this particular door several times, always wondering why she felt the irrepressible need to push on the handle and walk through. Perhaps she merely wanted to see what kinds of books were on the other side, as if they were the sum of all knowledge left in the aftermath. Perhaps it was a strange singing in her blood, akin to the hum she’d felt the last time Narnia called, the last time a higher power had spoken and beckoned and given her direction.  _ Perhaps it’s hope. _

Susan looked around. The sun had a couple of hours before it dipped below the horizon, but she was painfully aware that she was not a queen, not even grown, and that perhaps she should be about her business now or never. The windows looked dark, save for one softly-glowing light wavering from a back corner, just barely winking at her through the rippled leaded glass. With a deep breath, and maybe (just maybe) still hoping that she'd find a door to take her away ( _ home _ ), she tested the handle.

* * *

Aziraphale turned round the corner of a shelf when he heard the door slowly creak open. "I'm terribly sorry," he began, ready to deliver his practiced spiel to dissuade anyone actually stepping more than a few feet inside, but was brought up short at the sight of this particular patron.

In his time, Aziraphale had known a queen or king or two, and even some lower down on the courtly rungs, all in need of a little good guidance, a nudge toward what was right, in spite of their rather unified front against self-awareness. They all carried themselves with the sort of bearing that said "I am better, in fact I am best, and you won't be the one to tell me otherwise.” Aziraphale believed in human goodness, he truly did, but the best he could say of most royalty was that they had the odd glimmer of potential about once a century, and while he had plenty worse to say, he rather wholeheartedly agreed that none of them were truly regal in bearing.

But here, standing just inside the doorway of AZ Fell & Co, in a patched-up pea coat and a school uniform with the skirt hem twice let out, was the most regal human being he’d seen. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but the self-assured calm with which her gaze swept around the shop spoke of one who’d commanded the attention of an entire throne room as soon as she crossed its threshold. It was some strange magic, and Aziraphale might have impulsively bowed or knelt had the spell not been broken the minute the young lady’s voice came out in a querulous tremor.

“Pardon me,” she said, the ghost of a question behind the words. She folded her hands in front of her, one over the other, again in a manner so genteel that Aziraphale had a moment of panic before remembering that common sense dictated that neither of the youngest Windsors would have reason to come stand in the doorway of a West End bookshop.

Aziraphale peered over his spectacles. “My dear, are you lost?”

The young woman’s brow furrowed for just a moment as her eyes cast about the shop. Her eyes widened and she took a step forward, reaching for a stack of books that Aziraphale had recently acquired and had yet to put on any shelves. (He had a method for cataloguing, truly; that it made absolutely no sense to any potential patrons was  _ entirely _ the point.) She carefully withdrew a slim volume from the middle of the stack. “I’ve never seen this in a shop before.”

The gold lettering on the cover flashed in the afternoon light from the front windows.  _ The Worlds Within, _ by one Prof. Digory Kirke. A meandering philosophical treatise, Aziraphale recalled, that invited derision on first publication and was promptly pulled from printing. It was in his latest acquisitions precisely for its rarity, along with several rumors that the professor went as far as to privately suggest that there were, in fact, other worlds, and not simply within the soul. “A curiosity,” he offered up. “I’m so sorry, but it’s not for sale.”

With a smile the young woman placed the book back upon the stack. “I have my own copy, actually. Professor Kirke is a dear friend of the family.” She extended one hand. “I’m Susan.”

All pretense of the standoffish shop owner dropped in an instant. Aziraphale took Susan’s hand in a firm shake and, forgetting to even introduce himself, replied with a certain note of enthusiasm: “Would you happen to have any more of the professor’s writings?”

Susan cocked her head and peered at Aziraphale rather cannily. “Mr Fell, I presume?”

“I… yes.” Aziraphale withdrew his hand and let it rest atop the stack of books. “Terribly sorry. The enthusiasm of the collector, you see.”

“Of course.” Susan folded her hands in front of her once more, that curiously regal position resumed, the air of the unsure teenager vanished. “I’d be happy to share some of his work, Mr Fell, but I’m afraid they’re not for sale.”

Aziraphale hoped that he did not visibly deflate in the face of this pronouncement. He did nod, ready to reply, but Susan continued.

“Do many people come to this shop?”

Blinking, Aziraphale looked around. “Not if I can help it, to be perfectly honest.”

Susan nodded. “I like quiet. And books.”

Realization dawned. “You aren’t lost, are you?” Aziraphale felt a sudden rush of tenderness, of recognition. “You’re running away from something.”

Susan pursed her lips. “Not running, really. More like walking.” Another ghost of a smile flitted across her face at her little joke. “Mr. Fell-”

“Aziraphale.” The angel inclined his head slightly. “Aziraphale will do.”

This was met with another canny stare. “Aziraphale,” Susan said slowly. “I’m not lost. I’ve… lost something. And this door felt like it might…” She trailed off. “I’m so tired of searching for doors,” she muttered, to herself more than to Aziraphale. She was staring at the books again, her eyes fixed on the gold foil letters of the Kirke volume, and she blinked rapidly for a few long moments before looking back up. “A place to sit. A place to think. That’s all.”

It was then that Aziraphale knew what -  _ who _ \- he recognized in young Susan. It was then that he knew he’d take her under his wing (figuratively, please, it wouldn’t do to reveal his angelic nature so often). “You may come here, if you’d like.” He paused. “On one condition.”

Susan’s small smile returned. “The professor’s books.”

“The professor’s books.”

**Author's Note:**

> After seeing a lovely little work about Susan wandering into Aziraphale's bookshop, I wrote a bit of my own spin on the idea. I have more in mind, but this has been sitting in my drive for nearly a month and I thought it should see the light of day, with more chapters to come.
> 
> Obviously, The Worlds Within is a title I came up with for an imagined philosophical work that a very Lewis-esque vision of Digory Kirke could have written. After spending a lot of time reading C.S. Lewis' apologetics, I think I could maybe come up with a few passages for Susan and a certain demon to discuss in a future chapter. Maybe! Who's to say. :)


End file.
